Leaving Normal: Lux Interior, The Cramps 1946-2009

Dungun, 1982. Panggung Happy, a mid-sized run-down cinema. Almost empty. Around 10 punk rockers, barely out of their teens, dressed up and pumped up to see our heroes. Several bored veteran fishermen from the nearby wet market, escaping the midday heat by paying 50 sen each to the doorman friend.

We all sat down armed with fresh, crispy keropok goreng and watched this:

This clip is taken halfway through a concert movie called Urgh! A Music War. It’s a full length film showing one or two live performances by the then “cutting-edge” punk, post-punk, new-wave, synth-pop and reggae bands ripping up the norms in the US, UK and France back in 1980.

Produced by Miles Copeland, brother of The Police’s drummer Stewart Copeland, the film featured 3 live tracks by the then excellently energetic and “punky” The Police followed with upcoming (later huge) bands such as UB40, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Devo, Echo & The Bunnymen, Wall of Voodoo etc.

The harder “punk rock” heroes on display were The Dead Kennedys, Chelsea, The Members, The Alley Cats (not the Arumugam brothers!!) and 999, while many of us who were also huge on reggae and post-punk got to see Gang of Four and Steel Pulse!

Anyway, Urgh! A Music War was shown here in KL first back in 1982. I was aware of the movie at the time, after reading about it in the New Musical Express but had never ever thought that it would be ever be coming to Malaysia, not with all that “counter-culture” boogeyman business by the censors.

But it did and it so happened that I was in KL at the time. Me and my brother came down from Terengganu to see Ian Gillan’s Band (Deep Purple’s singer) playing the Merdeka Stadium, supported by the then rather exciting reggae-rock fusion of Dr. Sam & The Klinik!

It was a disappointing show but that’s expected. We’re not too bummed out by it; because we’re also on a mission to dub several new punk and new wave LPs here in KL. That’s what we do when we came to KL those days. From 1979 onwards, we would take the bus down to KL, stay at relatives or some friends place, go to Love Music at the Ampang Park and dub LPs onto 90-minutes cassettes, and bring them back to Terengganu to share with the nascent punks there.

So the very next day, we were at Ampang Park and I bought the Star newspaper and lo and behold! there’s a small advert, Urgh! A Music War was playing it’s first show at the Sentul cinema! Yay!!

We went straight there on a cab. Excitedly bought the tickets and my brother was already on his way into the cinema. I grabbed hold of his arm and told him that we should wait outside to see and meet KL punks who would be coming to see the film. So we sat outside, smoke a cigarette and waited.

15 minutes passed and not a single punk turned up. We laughed at how there were no punks in KL and started walking into the darkness of the cinema. Then someone patted my back. I turned around and there were four of our friends from Terengganu grinning at us! Yup! There were no punks in KL in 1982!

Later in the year Urgh! played Kuala Terengganu’s Rex cinema and when I got there there were 20+ punk rockers greeting me with massive smiles and cheers! A few weeks later it played in my hometown Dungun.

So consider this scenario…

Dungun, 1982. Panggung Happy, a mid-sized run-down cinema. Almost empty. Around 10 punk rockers, barely out of their teens, dressed up and pumped up to see our heroes. Several bored veteran fishermen from the nearby wet market, escaping the midday heat by paying 50 sen each to the doorman friend.

The Cramps (the clip above) came on and the fishermen started to squirm in their seats. By the time Lux Interior started putting his microphone on his groin and his wife (guitarist, Poison Ivy) sweatily grimaced at the camera; two of the fishermen stood up and started yelling obscenities at the screen. “Brayok mok! Muzik na’tang mende ginih!!,” one of them cursed loudly. Soon all of them walked out hurling more abuses.

We rolled on the dirty floors laughing.

===========================

Lux Interior died last week. Someone posted on my friend’s Facebook that Lux died of severe “cramps”. Not funny.

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